we created a store locater and now we are looking for some script of solution we can implement into it. basically we are looking for something with are wise zip code. let's say it someone search a zip code 11201 and there is no store with that zip code... but it should still show some stores within 50 miles of that zip code... we are looking for a solution for this 50 miles things... i mean we want to know how to tell the database that what zip code is how much near to what. you can see the current store locater here. http://www.jm-experts.com/justin/search.php
Store locators are never fun to make. You'll need the latitude and longitude of all the stores and Zip codes you want to cover in order to calculate the distance. You can download the zips & coordinates here. There's a few example distance formulas too. I have one for MySQL somewhere if you need it.